The storm had passed, leaving Bittersweet Court in a humid, dripping silence. The power was still out, a blackout that stretched across the entire county, turning the luxury development into a dark island.
Inside the sunroom of Number 4, the air was thick with the scent of beeswax and ozone. Maya had arranged a cluster of emergency candles on the teak coffee table, their flames standing straight and still in the airless room.
The four women sat in a tight circle, their knees almost touching. They weren’t drinking wine tonight. They were drinking warm tap water and staring at the object in the center of the table.
It was a beige plastic shoebox recorder, a relic Sarah had dug out of her attic. It smelled of dust and the 1990s. Inside the deck sat the TDK cassette tape Maya had pulled from the hollow block in her basement wall.
Juniper’s Insurance.
“Does it even work?” Chloe whispered. She was hugging a throw pillow, her eyes fixed on the machine as if it were a bomb. “Magnetic tape degrades. It’s been thirty years in a damp wall.”
“It works,” Sarah said. Her voice was brittle. “I put new batteries in.”
Maya reached out. Her hand hovered over the ‘Play’ button. She felt a strange reluctance, a hesitation she hadn’t expected. For weeks, Juniper Black had been a ghost, a symbol, a victim in a red dress. Pressing this button would make her real. It would bring her into the room.
“We need to know,” Elena said softly.
Maya pressed the button.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The sound of the tape mechanism was loud in the quiet room. A heavy hiss of static filled the air, sounding like rain.
Then, a breath. A sharp intake of air.
“Is this thing on? Okay. Okay.”
The voice was young. Terrified. But underneath the fear, there was a steel core of anger that Maya recognized instantly. It was the voice of a woman who had realized she was cornered and had decided to bite back.
“My name is Juniper Black. Today is August 18th, 1994. If you’re listening to this, then the accident they’re planning for me has already happened.”
Chloe let out a small sob. Maya stared at the spinning spools of the cassette.
“They think I’m stupid,” Juniper’s voice continued. “They think because I’m young, and because I’m pregnant, and because I live in the glass house, that I don’t see what’s happening. But glass works both ways. I see out.”
There was a pause on the tape. The sound of a lighter flicking. An exhale.
“It’s not about the baby,” Juniper said. “I mean, they hate the baby. It ruins the bloodline or whatever. But that’s not why they’re trying to scare me out. It’s the money.”
Maya’s eyes snapped up to meet Elena’s. The money.
“I found the second ledger,” Juniper said. “In the shed. The Gardener left it open. He thinks I don’t know math. But I did the math. The HOA fees. Four hundred dollars a month from two hundred homes. That’s almost a million a year. But look at the invoices. They pay GreenView Landscaping fifty thousand a month for mulch? Mulch costs five hundred bucks. They pay for pool maintenance on pools that don’t exist. They pay for ‘security consulting’ to a firm that has a P.O. Box in the Cayman Islands.”
The tape hissed again.
“The Gables isn’t a neighborhood,” Juniper whispered. “It’s a washing machine. They take the dirty money from the city—bribes, kickbacks, construction skimming—and they filter it through the Community Reserve Fund. They turn it into clean, suburban equity. And the Board? The men in the Blue Suits? They aren’t neighbors. They’re the board of directors for a cartel.”
Sarah gasped. “The Reserve Fund,” she whispered. “Elias… Elias is obsessed with the Reserve Fund. He audits it every week.”
“I told Tom,” Juniper said on the tape. Her voice cracked. “I showed him the numbers. I thought… I thought because he was a cop, he would help. I thought because he loved me, he would stop them.”
A bitter laugh cut through the static.
“But Tom isn’t a cop. He’s their dog. He took the ledger. He gave it to Mr. Thorne. And then he came back and told me that if I didn’t leave town by the end of the month, he couldn’t guarantee my safety during the ‘renovations.’”
Maya felt a cold fury rising in her chest. Garrett hadn’t just covered up the murder. He had delivered the death warrant.
“So I’m making this tape,” Juniper said. “I’m hiding it in the wall. Because I know they have keys. I know they come in when I’m sleeping. I can smell their cologne in the morning. Old Spice and rot.”
Maya looked at the darkness of her own house. The bugs in the nursery. The camera in the birdhouse. The tactics hadn’t changed.
“I’m going to the county clerk on Monday,” Juniper said. “I’m going to file a fraud report. I’m going to burn this whole perfect, white-picket-fence lie to the ground. But if I don’t make it to Monday… check the invoices. Follow the money. It’s all in the Tuesday Toss. That’s how they move the cash. The garbage trucks don’t just take the trash out. They bring the packages in.”
Click.
The tape ended. The machine whirred for a second before stopping.
The silence that followed was heavier than before. It was the silence of a crypt being unsealed.
“Money laundering,” Elena said, her voice flat. “All of this… the murder, the cover-up, the intimidation… it wasn’t about morality. It was about a ledger.”
“A million dollars a year,” Chloe calculated. “For thirty years. That’s thirty million dollars washed through this cul-de-sac. Adjusted for inflation and interest… we’re sitting on a hundred-million-dollar enterprise.”
“And Elias Thorne manages it,” Sarah said. “That’s why he was at the library. That’s why he was playing poker. He wasn’t gambling his own money. He was moving funds. Or maybe he is gambling the principal, and that’s why he’s panicked.”
Maya stood up and walked to the glass wall. She looked out at the dark shape of the gazebo.
“They killed her because she was going to audit them,” Maya said. “She wasn’t a damsel. She was a whistleblower. And the ‘Blue Suits’—Marcus Thorne, Rick’s dad, the Doctor—they authorized a hit.”
“A hit?” Chloe asked. “You think they hired someone?”
“No,” Maya said, turning back to the candlelight. “Rich men don’t hire strangers for sensitive work. They use the help. Or they do it themselves to prove loyalty.”
She looked at Sarah.
“Garrett,” Maya said. “Tom Garrett. He wanted to be a Blue Suit. He wanted the blazer. Killing the whistleblower… that was his initiation. That’s how he ‘got the nod.’”
Sarah put her hand over her mouth. “He killed her for a promotion. He killed her to get on the Board.”
“And now he’s the Chief of Police,” Elena said. “Which means the laundering operation is protected by the law.”
“But the Podcast,” Chloe said, confused. “If the Podcaster knows all this… why broadcast it? Why threaten us? Why not just go to the FBI?”
“Because the Podcaster isn’t the FBI,” Maya said. “The Podcaster is someone who got cut out of the deal. Or someone who wants to take over the business.”
She looked at the tape player.
“Juniper said the garbage trucks bring the packages in,” Maya said. “The Tuesday Toss. It’s not just gossip. It’s the drop.”
“The trucks come every Tuesday,” Sarah said. “The recycling trucks come later.”
“And the poison meat wrapper wasn’t in the recycling bin,” Maya said, connecting the dots. “Because the killer didn’t throw it away. He put it in the transaction bin.”
“We need to see the books,” Elena said. “The real books. Not the ones Elias keeps in the shed.”
“Juniper found them,” Maya said. “Thirty years ago. But she didn’t say where she found them. Just ‘in the shed.’ The Gardener’s shed?”
“Arthur,” Maya recalled. “Arthur had a shrine. Maybe he kept the ledger too.”
“Or maybe,” Chloe said, pointing to the ceiling, “the ledger is digital now. Elias was uploading a massive file at the library. Episode_05_Final.wav. What if the audio file is just a container? What if the money data is hidden inside the podcast episodes?”
Maya looked at Chloe. “Steganography. You said there was a text file in Episode Three.”
“Yes,” Chloe said, her eyes lighting up. “Coordinates. But maybe the other episodes have financial data embedded in the spectral noise. He’s not just broadcasting a story. He’s broadcasting the accounts. He’s sending the numbers to someone right under our noses.”
“Who listens to the podcast?” Maya asked.
“Everyone,” Sarah said.
“Exactly,” Maya said. “It’s the perfect transmission method. Public. Untraceable. Hiding in plain sight.”
She grabbed the cassette tape.
“Juniper gave us the motive,” Maya said. “Now we need the proof. If the money is still moving, there has to be a weak link. A paper trail.”
“The HOA pays vendors,” Elena said. “Fake vendors. Shell companies.”
“I can trace shell companies,” Maya said. “Forensic accounting was the one class I didn’t sleep through in J-school. If I can get the Tax ID numbers from the HOA filings…”
“I have the password,” Sarah said quietly.
They all looked at her.
“To the HOA portal,” Sarah clarified. “Elias gave it to me when I was on the Decoration Committee. He never changes passwords. He thinks ‘Thorne1994’ is secure.”
Maya smiled. It was a cold, dangerous smile.
“Thorne1994,” she repeated. “Of course it is.”
She blew out the candles.
“Power or no power,” Maya said. “We have work to do. Chloe, get your laptop. Sarah, get the login. Elena, keep watch. We’re going to follow the money all the way to the grave.”